


But, do you love me?

by travellinghopefully



Series: Whouffaldi Fanfiction Countdown [5]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Whouffaldi Fanfiction Countdown, whouffaldi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-19
Updated: 2015-09-19
Packaged: 2018-04-21 13:23:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,302
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4830659
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/travellinghopefully/pseuds/travellinghopefully
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The whole of season 8 in a few short words, does he love her, does she love him - will they say it?<br/>Angst and fluff and fluffy fluff.</p>
            </blockquote>





	But, do you love me?

**Author's Note:**

> Thought this would kill me - out a conference all day - trying to get this done before the deadline of the new series. 
> 
> Think I made it.
> 
> Hope I didn't leave out too many of the best bits.
> 
> For the final week of the whouffaldi fanfiction countdown - sorry about week 5 (maybe sometime).....

“I am not your boyfriend.”

Whatever had possessed him to say that? What he meant to say, was how much more to him than that she was. 

900 years. Every day he thought about her. Tried to remember her fragrance, her eyes, her hair, her arms wrapped round him. 900 years and he thought about no-one else. Lost in the ruin of himself, there was no-one else but Clara. 

Clara, his Impossible Girl, intertwined with his time line, throughout time and space.

900 years was enough time to ready himself for death, to be at peace with all things coming to an end. But he missed her.

And what did he choose to say? “I’m not your boyfriend.”

Oh, yes, he was Doctor Idiot all right.

She still travelled with him, maybe that would be enough? It would never be enough.

And what had he said about hugging? There wasn’t a moment of each day that he didn’t wish Clara’s arms were wrapped round him. 

Idiot, idiot, idiot.

Sometimes his heart lifted and he thought she was still his Clara, thought that she could see him, thought that she wasn’t disappointed in him. When she talked about impossible heroes and looked at him, sometimes when she smiled. But he could see she was looking for the other him, the younger looking him, the lighter him, the silly, clever boy. Couldn’t she just see, he was right here – he was fighting his way back to her through 900 years of loneliness, he was trying. If only she could just see him.

Then he found she was dating. The one with the bow tie was ok, bow tie he could deal with. But PE? Seriously? A soldier? 

She loved him. Clara said it out loud. She loved PE, not him. 

He didn’t show that his hearts were broken, he didn’t show the wreck she’d made of him. He just made sure that PE knew that he better be worthy of her. He felt too sick to cry, he couldn’t eat, he couldn’t sleep. He was heart sick, but he wouldn’t admit that, even to himself. Out of sorts after regeneration, that was it – it had been months, but anything other than acknowledge all his hopes and dreams were ashes.

She was his Impossible Girl, not someone else’s, someone who could never be worthy. But he wasn’t worthy either, he wasn’t a good man, he was a good Dalek – how that filled him with horror. How much hate was in him? How many people had died because of him, how much blood was on his hands? How many had sacrificed themselves for him? Killed so he didn’t have to lift a gun? Could he still claim to never be cruel, never cowardly? 

He said he didn’t need sleep, as if that was a good thing. There was no sleep without nightmares, the problem was, what he saw when he closed his eyes was real.

“You go away, you go a long way away.” That was the final twist of the knife – it was over. Clara was sending him away – no more trips, no more companion, no more Impossible Girl.

Somehow he persuaded her to join him for one last adventure, a last hurrah. The most romantic place he could think of, the Orient Express, in space. Beat that PE. 

“Hatred is too strong emotion for someone you don’t like.” She’d said that, she had definitely said that. She continued to confuse him with her big sad eyes, and the smile – the smile he would give the rest of his regenerations to keep on seeing. “Like” wasn’t love, but she still cared, maybe there was the shred of hope he could kindle, maybe she wasn’t completely lost to him, maybe she was still his.

Standing in the TARDIS she had looked right at him and said, “I love you.” She was talking to Danny, but she was looking right at him. He would take whatever crumbs that fell his way. He would horde them like the miser he was.

Then he was stunned, truly stunned, she agreed to keep travelling. Give her some planets? He would do anything if she would keep travelling with him. Anything.

He told himself not to get his hopes up, not expect anything, not wish, not daydream, not imagine. All of him ached when he was with Clara, but being apart from her was torture. 

All of time and space, and he lived for the moments that he was with her. Everything else was hollow, everything else was empty. 

When Clara, his Clara was there, colours were deeper, sounds sharper – more melodious, tastes richer – sometimes he even laughed.

He loved her. He said it out loud, the TARDIS hummed her approval, and may have thought “idiot.” He didn’t disagree.

When he thought he’d finally found balance, equilibrium, the knife edge between sorrow and happiness, Clara, no not Clara, circumstances found a new way to hurt him, to torture him. 

She didn’t want him to save her, she didn’t want to be the last of her kind.

What did that make him?

She sat with him and watched, but he was hollow inside. She would choose death rather than him, he wasn’t enough for her. He could never be enough for her.

He loved her.

She didn’t really betray him, it didn’t really happen. But the intent was there, the ferocity of her pain and grief and anger, all directed at him – it was there. 

What was left of him crumbled. 

“Do you think that I care for you so little that betraying me would make a difference?” 

He couldn’t say the words, but he could say that. He would go to hell for her.

He loved her.

He told her he found Gallifrey, she told him she and Danny were happy.

He lied, he didn’t know she did too. 

They hugged.

He tried to store away every fragment of those moments. The feel of her against him. Her arms wrapped round him. Her perfume, her hair, everything that was her. Store it away, memories to treasure, to haunt him, to torture him, to add to the things that he had lost. 

His Clara.

And then. 

And he couldn’t fully comprehend it, couldn’t quite understand it. It was beyond reason. Silly and amazing and wonderful and impossible. Just like Clara, his Clara.

“Come with me, don’t even argue.” 

And she didn’t and she hadn’t, and she’d taken his hand and she had run with him – and they were here in the TARDIS. 

Don't let him wake up.

Him and his Impossible Girl. Breathless, their arms wrapped round each other, laughing, holding on to what they thought they both had lost.

“Do you love me?”

IDIOT. 

He had said out loud. Be satisfied. Its enough. She’s here with you. She’s in your arms. You have a second chance. 

IDIOT.

IDIOT, IDIOT, IDIOT.

Her arms curved up, around his neck, her hand in his hair, her hand on the side of his face. He leant in to her touch. He craved her, he was shameless, he was utterly lost. 

And she kissed him. Her lips ghosting against his. He forgot to breathe.

“Do you really not know?”

And still she was kissing him. Along his jaw, his nose, his eyebrows, his cheeks and softly against his lips again.

Already and she could never kiss him enough. The taste of her, the smell of her, the feel of her in his arms.

He was resting one hand against her waist, the other hovered, not quite daring to touch her hair.

He looked at her, pleading, begging.

“Of course I love you, you idiot.”

He was dumbfounded, overwhelmed, undone. He held her close, his lips pressed to her hair. Murmuring over and over.

“Clara, my Clara.”


End file.
